Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
By Michael Bielawski
The state’s House Committee on General & Housing talked on Wednesday morning about a bill to have Vermonters – as citizens of the first state to formally ban slavery via its Constitution – pay reparations for the impacts of American slavery.
The bill H. 432 states that a special task force will look into, “how the State of Vermont will offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of Vermont for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on enslaved Africans and their descendants.”
The bill’s lone sponsor is Rep. Brian Cina, P/D Burlington. Cina has a history of introducing bills for progressive causes. In 2023 he was the lead sponsor of a bill for the elimination of all incarceration.
The bill states this task force must consider “full reparations.” They must look into “(A) how the recommendations comport with international standards of remedy for wrongs and injuries caused by the State, which include full reparations and special measures, as understood by various relevant international protocols, laws, and findings.”
It states that the task force must look into an apology on behalf of all Vermonters for slavery. They must consider “(B) how the State of Vermont will offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of Vermont for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on enslaved Africans and their descendants.”
The bill does not give an estimate on how much money might be paid to an African American household. It states that the task force will figure out “how any form of compensation to the descendants of enslaved persons should be calculated.”
The bill leaves the specific reparations vaguely defined. It states that the task force will see “what form of compensation should be awarded, through what instrumentalities, and who should be eligible for such compensation; and (G) how, in consideration of the Task Force’s findings, any other forms of rehabilitation or restitution to descendants of enslaved persons is warranted and what the form and scope of those measures should take.”
In California where reparations have also been considered, $223,000 per person was proposed and that’s only reparations for alleged housing discrimination in the mid-1900s, not including compensation for slavery itself.
Slavery still impacting African Americans?
Executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance Rev. Mark Hughes spoke to the committee via video about his thoughts. Hughes argues that the economic and social impacts of slavery continue even today.
“I’m drawing a direct connection with a continuous line that crosses the arc of history that connects us right back to Chattel Slavery,” Hughes said.
He said findings from previous studies on ongoing injustices include that white people currently have at least 13 times the wealth of black people.
Hughes had a definition of systemic racism on a slide. It states, “Systematic racism involves both the deep structures and the surface structures of racial oppression. It includes a complex array of anti-black practices, the unjustly gained political-economic power of whites, the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines, and the emotion-laden racist framing created by whites to maintain and rationalize their privilege and power.”
There may be a media campaign as well. A goal of the task force is to advise on public messaging to convince citizens to support their recommendations. The bill states they are to “recommend appropriate ways to educate the Vermont public of the Task Force’s findings.”
One point emphasized by Legislative Counsel Tucker Anderson was that the task force can only make recommendations, the power to set policy remains with elected legislators.
Constitutional implications?
Anderson also told legislators that there could be “Constitutional implications” to a reparations program.
He said, “They can recommend for example a systemic calculation for reparations, and recommend the persons who could be compensated for harm through a reparations program. Those recommendations would come back to the General Assembly and as I’ve heard Damien [legislative counsel Damien Leonard] discuss on the record before, there are Constitutional implications specifically for the quasi-judicial aspects of reparations programs.”
No further details were given. In January of 2022 for The Washington Times lawyer Hans Bader addressed the Constitutionality of reparations in a commentary titled “Giving reparations to slaves’ descendants in California is unconstitutional.”
He noted established legal precedent suggesting that reparations may not survive a court challenge.
He wrote, “The Supreme Court has said that race-based remedies are allowed only when they target the current effects of the government’s own widespread discrimination in the relatively recent past. In Richmond v. J.A. Croson, the high court ruled that the government cannot provide race-based “remedies that are ageless in their reach into the past.”
The piece gives more examples of court decisions setting a limit to how far back in time calls for reparations can go.
Burlington City Councilor spoke against reparations in 2020
Burlington City Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, who is African American, told True North Reports back in 2020 that reparations for slavery would be tricky because it took place so long ago.
“How do we basically just apologize, and what will that really, really mean? I don’t know,” he said. ”… If we want to do it, apologizing only is not enough, we want reparation. For that reparation, how’s that gonna happen because it’s now 400 years later? It has been a very, very long time and things have changed.”
The whole roughly 1-hour long hearing can be watched here.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle